1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a double-side recording apparatus and recording method for transporting a medium and performing recording on both sides of the transported medium, and more particularly to a technique of waiting for drying of a recorded portion when a medium whose one side has been recorded is reversed to perform recording on the other side of the medium.
2. Related Art
A double-side printing apparatus is known as one type of double-side recording apparatus (for example, JP-A-2004-314505, JP-A-2006-188068, and the like). The double-side printing apparatus is provided with a reversing unit for reversing a paper after printing on the front side. After front-side printing is completed, the reversing unit reverses the paper such that the back side becomes the side to be recorded.
For example, the double-side printing apparatus described in JP-A-2004-314505 has a problem in that parts on a paper transport path may be contaminated by ink since a printed portion is not dried when the paper is reversed immediately after one side (or front side) of the paper is printed, or a problem in that image quality may be degraded when the printed front side of the paper is rubbed and a printed image is blurred. For this reason, in the printing apparatus described in JP-A-2004-314505, a waiting time (or drying time) is set for a waiting operation until ink of the printed image or the like is dried when the front and back sides of the paper are reversed after front-side printing. Thus, a reversing operation is configured to reverse the paper after the drying time is elapsed and the ink is sufficiently dried.
On the other hand, an ink jet type printing apparatus is provided with a maintenance device for protection and restoration such that nozzle ink of a recording head is not thickened. The maintenance device has a cap. In the recording head in a waiting state in which printing is not performed, its nozzle aperture plane is sealed with the cap. In order to prevent the nozzle ink from being thickened in a non-capping period, flushing is performed to periodically eject ink regardless of recording. Nozzle clogging can be prevented by exchanging (or replacing) the nozzle ink with new ink. The maintenance device is arranged at a one-end position (or home position) on a moving path of the recording head. In the waiting time, the recording head is moved to the home position to wait in a capping state. At the other-end position (or flushing position) facing the home position on the moving path of the recording head, a through hole is provided to flush ink droplets. Upon flushing, the recording head is moved to the flushing position to perform the flushing operation. In the printing apparatus, there is a model in which flushing to the cap is performed or a model in which two flushing positions are set at both ends on the moving path of the recording head. When the waiting operation is performed until the drying time is elapsed, the recording head waits at the one-end position on the moving path.
However, flushing is performed whenever a predefined time is elapsed, for example, in a range of 5 to 15 sec. When the drying time is relatively long (for example, 20 sec or more), flushing is periodically performed a number of times during a waiting interval. For this reason, there is a problem in that ink is wasted for a different purpose other than printing.